


Amygdala

by chekcough



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc (X-Files), F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-13 06:36:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16012313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chekcough/pseuds/chekcough
Summary: Mulder and Scully help local law enforcement solve a case in California.





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> I've been going through my computer and coming across pieces of writing I did years ago. I'm working on a large Colonization fic at the moment, but I thought I'd publish some of these "lost files" because it's fun. I'm not editing them from their original form, and some pieces are unfinished. This is one of them. It has eight chapters and comes to an end, although I had originally intended to carry it on longer. I hope you enjoy what's there. Here's the first chapter.

She arrives in late June, the plane landing at LAX before dawn. They have been racing it ever since coming over the midwestern states, so that now passengers step onto the tarmac in the dark.

By the time she is out of the terminal the sun has risen. In college she’d read the words, ‘ _the dawn comes up like thunder’,_ and she had always wanted to know the term physically. Though this dawn is not abrupt like thunder. It is a precious kind of quiet, the sleepy shuffle of worn travelers, jackets brushing. Outside, Scully sees the bleeding sun climb, trails of fiery colors left on the morning clouds. 

As soon as her passport with the gold government bar is processed, what looks like a rookie agent approaches and moves alongside her to a waiting car. Scully struggles with her suitcases but he offers no help. When they pull away from the airport the sky is still loud with color, heat already rising off the pavement in waves, and Agent Cline hands her a thin file. 

“The dossier,” he says. 

* * *

 

“How long has it been? You’ve lived here, right?”

“Twenty years. You read my file?”

Agent Cline shrugs, looks over at her. “Agent Mulder told us you were coming.”

“I see.” 

“Your father was in the navy?” 

“Yes.” The man looks as if he’s about to prod her again, and Scully smiles. “Look, do you mind if I don’t talk in the car on the way to the motel -I didn’t sleep on the plane. I’d like to look over this file, maybe get an hour of sleep at the motel. I assume Agent Mulder’s still there, it’s not too late.”

Agent Cline flicks the turn signal on at a stoplight and Scully notices the tall tropical trees, the brightening world. It is strange to be here again after so long. “No, he sent me. They’ve been up nights on this case.”

“Oh. Take me there, then. Forget the motel.”

“Sure?”

Scully nods. Her spine digs into the seat now as it did on the plane. She wonders how long it has been since Mulder has slept in the three days he has been down here on this case.

* * *

 

Agent Powell puts a hand on Mulder’s shoulder and nudges him awake. The younger agent lifts his head from the cradle of his folded arms and runs a hand over his face as if to wipe off the grime of the case that could have gathered there overnight. “Is that her?” Powell asks, and Mulder straightens, looks at his partner as she walks through the bullpen. She looks light on her feet, and purposeful as ever.

Agent Cline opens the door to the room they’ve closed off to house all the evidence and profiling information on the killer, and Mulder stands, a small nod to Cline, who leaves and shuts the door behind him. Mulder watches Scully take it all in. Her eyes travel quickly around the room. The map of California tacked up on a white board, red Sharpie noting the locations where the bodies were found. Empty styrofoam coffee cups overflowing a small white trashcan. Mulder’s long winded handwriting in marker on another board. 

“You already went to the motel?” Mulder asks.

“No, Agent Cline said you’d been here all night.”

Mulder shrugs. “I got some sleep. You should go get some rest, Scully, you never sleep on planes.”

“I’m fine. Do you have any new leads?” She moves to the papers spread out in front of him, braces one arm on the table while the other hand leafs through. The same crime scene photos that she’d seen in the dossier. A yellow legal pad with Mulder’s scrawl crossing the lines at a diagonal. ( _All victims blonde, 3 abdominal stab wounds on Jane 6_ )

“Nothing.” He picks up his jacket, hanging on the back of a chair, and puts it on. “Come on, I’ll take you to breakfast. Oh, this is Special Agent Powell. He’s helping with the case.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Agent Powell is an older man, with a fatherly smile and light handshake. 

“You, too,” Scully says. “Will you join us?” She tries to cover up Mulder’s faux pas. 

Agent Powell smiles, shakes his head no. “I’m gonna go home to get a few winks.” He nods to both of them, moves past Mulder to the door, leaves it ajar. 

Mulder is rolling his sleeves down, cuffing them once. He tips his eyes to Scully. “What did your doctor say?”

“I’m fine. No change.” 

“Hopefully we can catch this guy. Wrap up this case quickly before next week.”

“Yes.” Scully gestures for him to straighten his tie. “But I can easily reschedule my appointment for next week, Mulder.”

“I know.” He holds the door open for her and follows her through the bullpen, feeling the eyes of every man in the room pass over them. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re miles off, he thinks with a hint of bitterness. She won’t even tell me how bad the cancer is. 

* * *

She’s truly hungry, and feels Mulder’s approval wash over her as she orders a side of toast. “Can I have your pineapple?”

“Sure, Scully,” he says, amused, tired. He turns the rim of his plate so she can take cubes of the fruit off it and onto hers. Mulder watches her eat it, one piece of yellow fruit between two straight rows of teeth. Her tongue sweeps across her lips.

“Mulder, did you hear me?” Scully says. “Was Jane Doe 6 found just like the other victims?”

He nods. “Yeah. Nude, face down in a ditch along Interstate 5. Eyes gouged out. He’s getting better at it. The work is less messy, now. More confident.” 

“Thank you,” Scully says to the waitress, who has caught the tail end of Mulder’s words while delivering the side order of toast. She butters a slice of bread and takes a bite. “Has there been an autopsy?” 

“Yes” The coffee is starting to take effect, but instead of feeling energized he feels jumpy as a cat. “The report is supposed to arrive this morning, but I’m not anticipating any anomalies. We’ve started a profile.”

“You’re profiling him?”

“I’m working with this guy, you haven’t met him yet. Pete Gordon. We worked together when I was still with the BSU. A long time ago.” 

Scully raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t know this Mulder. Mulder the profiler. Either he’s delirious from lack of sleep, or the rumors had been true and this is how he’d earned his nickname. There is something unguarded in his eyes this morning, a wildness. “Mulder, are you all right?”

“Just tired. Hey,” he taps her fork with his as she reaches toward his plate. “I said you could have the pineapple, the cantaloupe I’ll eat.” 

* * *

“White male, twenty-five to fifty. Guessing he lives alone, but was married before. Possibly has a medical background, from the way he extracts the eyes and slits the throat. You’re probably better at making that conclusion, actually.” Special Agent Gordon inhales deeply. He looks more exhausted than Mulder. “Strikes within same ethnic group, women eighteen to thirty.” He pauses, looks to Mulder. “Spooky seems to think that hair color has something to do with it.”

A shiver runs down Scully’s spine.

“Yeah,” Mulder says. “All the victims have blonde hair. We missed that at first. Probably points to the mother.”

“Doesn’t it always.”

“You work fast,” Scully says, looking to them both. 

Agent Gordon shakes his head. “We were at dead ends until Mulder showed up. Put that together in under an hour. That’s where he got the name, right?” He grins at her.

Spooky? People really called him that?


	2. Chapter 2

At six the next morning, Scully’s cell phone rings. 

“Scully,” she croaks. 

“They’ve got another body,” Mulder says, sounding equally unenthusiastic about the early hour. 

“I’ll get dressed.”

* * *

 

The summer sun is like a scalding peach in the sky, even at eight when they reach the newly discovered body. Predictably, in the warm, moist earth by the side of the interstate. Scully feels overheated in her jacket and trousers, and wishes she had thought to wear a skirt.

Jane Doe 7. Her blonde hair is dirty with dried blood and mud, eye sockets empty. _What was the last thing you saw, Jane? What was the last thing you heard?_ Scully walks with the photographer, pointing out specific areas she’d like documented, and bagging the developing polaroids. 

“Who’s she?” Detective Wilkins asks, standing near Mulder. Another man trying to track down this spree killer before he strikes again. 

“My partner,” Mulder says, shading his eyes to look at her. At her focused eyes on the body, at the way she is speaking quietly with the photographer. 

“Huh. Where’s she been the past few days?”

Mulder glances back at the ground, then back at Detective Wilkins. “She got held up in Washington.” He wonders what he should be telling people. _She stayed behind to have another round of chemo. She had to come two days late because she needed one to recuperate after getting pumped full of chemicals. She’s sick. She has cancer. She’s dying._ If Wilkins notices this lapse in Mulder’s attention, he doesn’t say anything, just watches the pretty young agent stand, looking a little wobbly in the early heat.  “You two been partners long?”

“About three and a half years.”

“Long time.”

Scully walks back over to them, dangling the bag of polaroids. “These are for you. I’m assuming you want me to perform the autopsy?”

“I can drive you to the morgue, but I have to back to work with Gordon on the profile.”

She nods. “I’ll call you when I’m finished.” They happen to be on the passenger side, and Wilkins watches as Mulder casually opens Scully’s door for her, letting her pull it closed. 

“See you back at the office?” he asks. 

Mulder nods. As they drive off, Wilkins watches Mulder asks her something. She waves him off with a graceful hand and leans back in her seat, closing her eyes. 

* * *

From the look of it, the body is very recently dead, killed since she had flown in the day before. When Scully realizes it must have happened during her evening drive back from the field office, Mulder in the passenger seat, she has to stop her hands from trembling. The two medical students who had been assigned to assist her as part of their training look at each other. She never usually translates the time of a death into personal time.

“Are you all right?” one of them asks.

“Her arms are both broken, do you see?” she says, avoiding their question. 

Scully looks up at the young men. These are students who have not yet graduated, young enough to be appalled. It is the freshness of the body. She is still someone. Scully dips each of the fingers in a beaker of blue solution so she can check for cuts and abrasions. 

“About twenty years old. Dead twelve hours. Do you agree?” 

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

They seem nervous, even afraid. 

“What are your names again?” Scully asks. 

They tell her. 

“The important thing is to say out loud what your first impressions are. Then rethink them. Admit you can make mistakes.” (Should she be lecturing them? She had not expected to teach while on this case.) “If you are wrong the first time, redraw the picture. Maybe you can catch what was overlooked…How were her arms broken without the fingers being damaged? It’s strange. Your hands go up to protect yourself. Usually the fingers get damaged.”

“Maybe she was praying.”

Scully stops and looks up at the student who had spoken.

* * *

 

It is a long autopsy, longer than Scully had expected, but examining the eye sockets and remaining tissue had taken a thorough two hours. It is late afternoon, now. Her two assistants had been attentive and interested in her work. She appreciates that. They will make fine pathologists someday.

“Scully?” She hears his voice from outside the washroom. Tapping the door with her fingers, Scully clears her throat. 

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Did you find anything?” 

“The report is on the bench out there. I’ll have to type it up, my notes are all over it.” They do not speak while Scully links the clasp on her bra, stares at herself in the mirror above the sink, critically taking in the outline of her ribs, the press of her sternum, the hollowness by her collar bones. She will not mention that she had been sick moments before he had arrived. He listens to the rustle of her clothing, allows himself to imagine her naked. It is the wrong place, the wrong time. He shakes his head.

“So, nothing.” The door clicks open and Scully walks out, smoothing her shirt, tucking a stray hair into place. 

She nods. “Nothing. Except the stab wounds and broken arms. I assume that’s the result of a struggle. What does that mean? Do you have an idea?”

“I don’t know.” He looks at her fully for the first time, blanches. “Scully, do you want some water? Sit down a minute.” She’s white as a sheet, her hair and lips standing out stark like blossoming blood on a white tissue.

“I -Mulder, what?”

“Just let me get you some water.” He stands, eases her down onto the bench, is at a loss. Scully stands again. 

“Mulder, I’m fine. Let’s go.” Her eyebrows knit together when he looks at her again. “Let’s go.”

* * *

As they enter the field office, they hear a voice.

“So —this is ‘Spooky’?” A broad-chested man in his late forties is approaching Mulder casually, with his hand out. He shakes Mulder’s hand. “Detective Armstrong.”

“This is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully.”

Detective Armstrong does not shake her hand, barely looks at her. 

“That was a long time ago,” Mulder says. 

“I heard about it. I was on another case at the time.”

“Detective Armstrong…let’s not mention it again, okay? A lot of blood under the bridge since then.” 

“Right. Right,” he says in a drawl Scully will become familiar with, a precise and time-stalling mannerism in him. Detective Armstrong’s “Right,” spoken twice, is an official and hesitant agreement for courtesy’s sake but includes the suggestion that things are on hold. 

Mulder smiles at him, wanting to get over the fact that they’ve managed to clash in their first few sentences. “Nice to meet you. I’ve read one or two of your papers. You were published in The Economist.”

This brightens Armstrong’s demeanor immensely. 

“Have you met my partner, Agent Dana Scully?” Mulder tries again. Detective Armstrong nods, briefly shakes Scully’s hand. 

“Are you married? Got a family?” This, Scully notices, is solely addressed to her. 

“Not married. No family.”

“Right.” 

Mulder raises his eyebrows at Scully, an amused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Scully ducks her head to hide hers.

* * *

 

“Are you friends with Agent Gordon?” Scully asks, eyes half closed as Mulder navigates them back to the motel. It is unbearably hot, muggy with the breeze off the coast. The car is still warm from baking outdoors all day. Mulder looks at her. 

“Pete Gordon? We were friends at the Academy. Why?” 

“You let him call you ‘Spooky’?” 

“He was on that case with me. He’s a damn good profiler, Scully. It was like a war, that case.”

“So, you wouldn’t let me call you ‘Spooky’?” Scully feels sleepy and playful. 

He laughs. “No.” 

Suddenly, Scully is wracked with nausea. She braces a hand on the dashboard. “Pull over, Mulder.”

“What?”

“Now!” Mulder swerves off the road, curses when Scully unbuckles, half falling out of the car in her hurry to retch by the side of the road. Only when he sees her from this angle, perfect if he were to cross-section her, does Mulder realize just how much this disease has ravaged her. She is like a waving stalk of meadow grass. By the time he gets out of the car and reaches her, Scully is standing straight again, wiping her mouth. “I’m better. I’m okay.”

“Like hell you are.”

“It happens sometimes. I just had a treatment, and I’m a little jet lagged.” 

He touches her arm. When she doesn’t pull away Mulder squeezes it. He tries to remain calm, to not take his anger at the disease out on her. “Okay. I’ll take you back to the motel. Forget dinner. We’ll order in.”

* * *

 

Scully dreams. 

She’d fucked him in hotels, it had always been hotels. Never the same one twice. And never their beds. Later, she was grateful for that. Him curled over her, in her and over her, heavy. She hadn’t liked the weight of him on her, really. And he used her too fast. Would flip her over and pound into her again when she wasn’t quite ready. She had been so young. 

He’d called her things she hadn’t ever wanted to be called. Things like _baby._ Like _angel._

Daniel. Daniel her lover. Make him her teacher. Make him married. 

_The Lord preserves all who love him…_

Scully pushes her chest up against his mouth, bites her lip. She curves her leg around his waist, pulls him in deeper. She gets on her hands and knees for him. Words from her parents’ generation float in front of her. 

Harlot. 

Slut. 

_…but all the wicked he will destroy._

“I love you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Don’t say that. Please.”

“Why?” He’s offended. 

“Just, shh.” Fuck me, groan into my neck, but don’t say anything out loud. Don’t make it real. Don’t make me remember what I’m doing. 

_…desire conceived gives birth to sin._

“No!” 

Scully wakes up drenched in sweat, trembling. She takes a shower sitting in the tub with the spray beating onto her head. The water is hot, and she is cold. Unbearably cold. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Reviews appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

The weekend is uneventful. With no anomalies in the autopsy, they are left with nothing to go off of. Scully sits with Mulder, sipping her cranberry juice, and watches the sun rise in the cloudless sky. California, usually dry in the summer, has been experiencing a wet, muggy climate for the past three days she has been here. Wind from off the Pacific, Agent Gordon had told her, although walking from the morgue to the car after reexamining the other bodies there hadn't even been a breeze. The air is still, heavy.

"As bad as it sounds, Scully, at this point it's just a matter of waiting for another body. Checking for prints, again. Paying attention to missing persons."

"And the eyes? What do you think that means?"

"A reaction to something in his life. You know, there's always a catalyst. I think this guy might have had a blind relative. Probably his mother. But it might have been a degenerative condition, something that couldn't have been prevented." Mulder looks at her untouched food and frowns.

"Stop it," Scully says gently. "I'm not that hungry."

"And I think maybe hair has less to do with it than we originally thought. I think maybe he's after the eye color. Fair coloring usually suggests light eyes. Blue or green eyes."

Scully nods, takes a careful bite of scrambled eggs. "And until we find the identity of these Jane Does, we won't know for certain what color he's after."

"Yes. Gordon got a call last night from a family whose daughter had gone missing. He's bringing them to make an ID…now," Mulder says, checking his watch. Nine. "But we've still got some time."

"I'm finished," Scully says, setting her fork down.

"I'm having another cup of coffee," Mulder explains, flagging down the waitress.

* * *

 

Shading his eyes from the sun, Agent Gordon walks over to them as Mulder parks the car and he and Scully get out. They kick up dry dust with their feet, clouds of it still settling from the car. She likes Pete Gordon. He's friendly, easy. He smiles at her as they meet in the middle of the parking lot.

"Not a positive ID," he says. "But we just got a Missing Person alert for a twenty-three year old girl, blonde hair, green eyes."

"Let's go." Mulder tosses the car keys up lightly, catches them in the palm of his hand. "Who called it in? Boyfriend?"

"Parents," Gordon says, walking back to his car. "Follow me, it's not far."

Mulder leaves the car running and shuts the door softly, leaving Scully outside, sleeping **,** while they go in to question Sophie Lambert's parents -the mother and father of a blonde, green-eyed girl who is currently getting her graduate degree in Architecture at UC-Berkley.

"Is she okay?" Pete asks as they ring the doorbell.

"She's fine. She's jet lagged."

"Ah."

* * *

 

Mulder hears the car door slam just as they're saying goodbye to Sophie's tearful parents. They've gotten their next victim, Mulder's sure of it. When Pete opens the door, the heat is scorching, as is Scully's glare when she sees them.

"Woah," Pete says under his breath.

She doesn't say anything until Mulder is closer to her, Agent Gordon fleeing to his own car. "Don't ever do that again." She straightens her jacket. "Agent Gordon, could I get a ride back to the field office with you? You can fill me in on the new developments."

He looks mildly terrified, and Mulder looks like he's just been scolded by his wife.

"Sure. Of course."

Without a second glance, Scully climbs into Agent Gordon's car, putting him at ease with a soft smile, and leaves Mulder in the dust to follow.

* * *

 

"Go back to your motel, get some rest. You're not going to do anyone any good if you're dead on your feet," Detective Armstrong is saying when Scully comes back from the washroom. Agent Gordon hands her a paper cup of water, his eyes soft. They had gotten along together well on the car ride back. He had made her laugh. "You've got to do that more often," he exclaimed. Scully had blushed. It had been so long since she'd been with a man besides her partner.

"It's all right, Mulder," Pete says. "They've got it covered."

Mulder opens his mouth to say something, and Scully moves forward. "Come on, Mulder. There's an APB out."

Armstrong chuckles. "Listen to Mrs. Spooky."

Scully frowns briefly, then tugs on Mulder's sleeve. "Let's go."

* * *

 

She has a nosebleed in the car on the way back to the motel. Mulder pretends not to notice when she pulls a ratty tissue out of her pocket and dabs at it, wipes it away. She turns off the air conditioning vents on her side of the car, and he flicks the air off altogether, knowing that she's cold. They drive in silence for a long while, and Mulder thinks maybe she's fallen asleep again.

"You shouldn't have left me in the car today," Scully says quietly.

"You were asleep."

"You should have woken me up."

"Scully…"

She looks at him sharply. "I don't want to be treated like an invalid. I'm here, I'm working."

"You acted like a child back there, going off with Gordon," Mulder says out of spite.

Scully sits up and takes another careful pass over her nose with the tissue. "Maybe I wanted to get to know him better without you hovering over me."

"I don't hover," Mulder says petulantly.

"Now who's the child."

* * *

 

It is late at night, or early in the morning, when Scully hears a knock at her door. She goes to it, clumsy with sleep, and looks out of the peephole.

"It's me, Scully," he croaks.

When she opens the door, he looks destroyed. Like a parent who's just lost a child. Like a wounded animal.

"Mulder? What is it? Are you all right?" Scully is instantly awake, immediately alert, and ushers him inside. She pushes him down to sit on the bed, onto her wrinkled still-warm sheets, the discarded polyester comforter. "What's wrong?"

She moves closer to him, and Mulder puts his arms out for her, pulling her closer and resting his cheek on her belly. Scully does not move. He does not say anything, and she is too tired to wonder what he would if he did.

"Mulder?" she says after a long moment. "That's enough." She pulls back, and he lets her go willingly, putting his head in his hands.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"For what? What's wrong?"

She sits beside him, tips his head up.

"I need for you to let me take care of you, sometimes," he says, his voice broken. "You're so stubborn. You push me away and push us all away and all I'm trying to do is be there for you."

"Is this about today? About me sleeping in the car?"

"No. Yes. It's about all of it."

"I'm jet lagged. It probably had nothing to do with the cancer." Mulder closes his eyes against that word. "I'm fine. I feel fine."

"I saw you have a nosebleed in the car on the way here."

Scully throws her hands in the air. "So what? I had a nosebleed. It's not the end of the world, Mulder!"

He stands, now. For a moment seems confused as to where he is. And then he looks at her, at the coldness in her eyes. "Scully, I can't imagine a world without you in it anymore. It's like you're giving up."

"Get out."

"Scully-"

"No, get out. Let me sleep." She crosses the room to the door, opens it. The night air rushes inside, hot and smoky, like the desert. It feels good.

"Scully, listen-"

"That's enough, Mulder."

He leaves, looking at her like a lost boy, and Scully's heart only hardens toward him. Mulder, her friend. Mulder, the person who loves her most in the world, except possibly her mother. And she will barely let him hold her in his arms. She thinks of him now. Of him watching her die, and Scully bursts into frustrated tears.

After a few minutes, she stops crying, feeling foolish. But she does not go back to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

"You should wear cotton out here," Gordon is saying. "White. The sun will roast you alive."

It is Wednesday, five days since she'd arrived, and two days since Sophie Lambert had been reported missing. And now they are standing over her body, dead about twelve hours. Putrefaction has already set in, and Scully crouches staunchly beside the girl, using a hand to check for any abdominal wounds. Agent Gordon wrinkles his nose, turns away with a hand over his mouth. Scully says something to the photographer, and from behind him he hears the sharp snap and hiss of the polaroid camera going off.

"Thank you," Scully says, standing again, pulling off her glove. She walks to where Gordon is standing, and he turns to grimace at her. It is monumentally hot, and Scully's hair is sticking to the back of her neck. The roadside ditch is dry, cracked, and Scully's heels are dust covered, her nylons slippery.

"Hot?" Gordon asks, smiling now. They are walking back to the car.

Scully nods, watches out of the corner of her eye as Mulder consults with Detective Armstrong.

"I thought you were from the northeast," she says as Gordon opens the passenger door. She rode to see the body with Mulder, now she will ride back to the station with Agent Gordon to examine the latest bits of evidence while Sophie's body cools.

"I am."

"Then why are you advising me about the heat?" She is glad they are keeping it light. Not many agents she's worked with have been able to do that.

He laughs, flipping on the air conditioning. As they pull back onto the interstate, Scully feels Mulder's eyes follow them. "I've been here for the last ten years."

"I grew up here," Scully offers.

"Really?"

"San Diego. My father was stationed there for a long time."

"And now you're from D.C."

"Yes."

He looks at her, smiles. "Then you know how hot it can get."

"Yes." Scully closes her eyes against the cool air blowing across her face.

"Can I take you to lunch?" Gordon asks casually, and Scully opens her eyes, blinks. He notes her hesitation. "Not like that. As friends."

Scully smiles, embarrassed. "Sure. I'd like that. Although lunch before an autopsy isn't usually done."

"I'm honored."

* * *

The door to the investigation room, blinds now drawn against prying eyes, squeaks open, and Mulder looks up, expecting to see Scully.

"How's it coming, Mulder?" Detective Armstrong asks, handing him a cup of bad coffee.

Mulder leans back in his chair. He'd gone from seeing the body to personally informing Sophie Lambert's parents. That always took a toll.

"He's keeping them alive for a couple days. Scully says that Sophie Lambert probably died less than a day ago. There's no evidence of rape, of abuse other than the quick cut across the throat. And Jane Doe 7's arms were broken, as well as the stab wounds. Those were absent in Sophie."

Detective Armstrong sits, looking over the images Scully had directed to be taken. He can't contain his disgust at the empty eye sockets. "Anything else?"

Mulder sits up straight, now. "I'm thinking that it isn't the mother that was potentially blind. Maybe he has a sister. Or had a sister. His victim pool is all young women, I think that points to a younger connection with whatever vision impairment we're dealing with."

"I see." Armstrong looks as if he's about to leave, then laughs. "Not a good choice of words, considering."

"Sir, a woman is dead."

"Yes. Well."

There is a brief moment of loaded silence. Then, "Has Agent Scully been here?"

"Your partner?"

"Yes."

"No." Armstrong narrows his eyes. "How long has she been with the Bureau?"

Mulder takes the cap off his pen, intending to begin work again, eager to get rid of the man. "About four years. And before that she went to med school. She's a doctor."

"Where'd she go to med school?"

Mulder frowns. "Maryland State, although I don't see why that's relevant."

Detective Armstrong wrinkles his nose. "I'll be in my office if you need me."

* * *

"You're nothing like how I thought you'd be," Gordon says after they place their orders (BLT on wheat, ham on rye). Scully raises an eyebrow.

"What did you think I'd be like?"

Gordon shrugs. "Spooky said you were 'scary smart' and that you almost shot him once." Scully is surprised that the two men have kept in touch, then realizes that her partner probably has friends outside of work, just as she does. Did. It seems that her friendships have dwindled over the past few years.

"Oh. I did," Scully says, catching his concealed curiosity. "I did almost shoot him once."

"You won't shoot me, will you?" Gordon smiles, takes a sip of water.

"Don't count on it," Scully jokes. Their sandwiches arrive, and Scully finds that again she's hungry, a good sign.

"I don't know," Agent Gordon continues. "I thought you'd be…taller."

Scully laughs.

* * *

Mulder arrives at eight, just as he said he would. He's gotten better at being on time these past few months, and Scully wonders if it's because of the cancer. There is a knock at the door to the locker room at the morgue, and Scully looks up from buttoning her blouse.

"Just a minute!" she calls, and swears she can feel his nod from behind the door. She hopes he does not hear the shake in her voice.

The sun and heat had kept the body warm far longer than was natural. With one hand on braced on the abdomen and the other holding the scalpel, Scully had felt what she thought was warm, living skin beneath her left palm as she cut a Y-incision. Without her assistants, she had taken a step back, putting her hands on her hips and raising her eyes to the ceiling. A deep breath.

Autopsies are more personal, now.

"They're running a check using our search criteria. Detective Armstrong said it'd be ready by tomorrow morning." He looks up as the door clicks open and Scully appears. She holds a pink folder in front of her.

"Well, this is one more thing to add," she hands him the folder and watches as he opens it, smiles when his eyes widen.

"A fingerprint!"

"A thumb," Scully clarifies. "And based on the weight distribution that I was able to determine, I think he's left handed."

Mulder guides her out of the room, up the stairs, and out of the morgue, praising her "unrivaled" skills as a pathologist. Scully rolls her eyes.

"Well, this kills my plans for tonight. We should take that print to the station immediately," he says, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot. The roads are quiet, and Scully stretches her legs out, massages her stiff fingers.

"What were your plans for tonight?" Scully asks.

"I was going to take you to a sports bar so we could watch the game."

Scully smiles. "It seems as if all the boys want to take me out to eat these days."

Mulder stiffens imperceptibly. "Who's 'all the boys'?"

"I had lunch with Agent Gordon this afternoon."

"Oh."

"He's nice. I like him."

Mulder nods. "He is nice. He was great to work with. Always kept things easy."

"Yes."

Mulder makes the right turn into the station and parks. "It's gonna be a long night."


	5. Chapter 5

By the time the results of the search come through, it is five in the morning and Scully is folded over the table in the investigation room, Agent Gordon across from her in a similar state. Mulder had written down incoming names until four, at which point he'd decided that he needed a break, and had taken a short walk down two blocks and back, returning with a box of doughnuts from a twenty-four hour corner market.

"You a cop?"

"Not really."

But all the agents still awake had brightened at the smell of them, several waking up long enough to eat one and doze off again.

* * *

Mulder comes back into the investigation room in time to see Scully stretching awake, a frown crossing her face. She looks pale, clammy. Mulder goes to her, touches her shoulder.

A swallow, as if she were coming up for air.

"It's still early."

"Okay," she says, eyes still closed. Scully massages her temple.

"Are you all right?" He realizes that they have been gone for six days. She needs to go home for her appointment.

Scully opens her eyes, squints at the bright fluorescents. "Turn those off," Mulder says, waving at Agent Wilkins, who's leaning against the wall eating a doughnut. "Better?"

Scully nods, looks to see if they're alone. Apart from Gordon, asleep beside them, they are. "I left my medication back at the motel. Headache."

He squeezes her shoulder. "Okay. I'll take you back."

"No, it's okay. I just need an Advil."

"Mulder," Detective Armstrong says from the doorway, flipping the lights on again. "They didn't find a match."

"Shit," Mulder says. "I guess we'll have to go after those names. I also want a check for women under the age of thirty run through the hospitals to see who was treated for any sort of degenerative vision condition."

"Wilkins, get on that," Armstrong says, and Scully stands up next to Mulder. He keeps his hand on her back.

"I'll go find you an Advil," Mulder murmurs, walking away from her.

"Are you up to working?" Detective Armstrong asks as Scully straightens her clothes, brushes her hair behind her ears. Her head snaps up.

"Of course."

Detective Armstrong walks into the room, straightening papers. "You have cancer."

"I do."

"Do you really think you should be in the field, Agent Scully?"

Scully frowns at him. "I don't think that's any of your business, sir."

He smiles down at her. "I'm running this investigation, Agent. I've been told that it's terminal. You should be home, with your family. Not out here." She does not notice that Agent Gordon has woken up, has left the room.

Scully draws herself up to her full height, her head coming level with his shoulder. He's taller even than Mulder. "Detective Armstrong, you may have authority over this investigation, but you have no right to tell me how to run my life."

Her voice is like ice.

She leaves the room.

* * *

Mulder walks back to where he'd left her, and finds that Scully has left the room. He locates her across the bullpen, leaning over the water fountain. She looks as tense as an archer's bow. Mulder watches as Gordon goes to her, next to her, and touches her back. Scully stands, her eyes dry and slightly red, and leans into him, tucking her face into his side.

Mulder stops and looks at them. Gordon puts a hesitant arm around her, pats her arm, and Scully looks up at him. Mulder averts his eyes and walks back to the investigation room, the small white pills sticky in his hand.

* * *

There's something not right. He doesn't feel like he should. Scully frowns into Mulder's chest, raises her head. And it's Gordon who smiles down at her encouragingly.

"Oh. Sorry." Scully is embarrassed. At least most of the detectives and field agents haven't come in yet to witness her moment of weakness.

"That's all right. Armstrong's an ass."

Scully smiles wryly. She turns away from him.

"Mulder went back into the room just now. He's probably looking for you."

"Yes." Scully moves away, then looks back at Gordon. "So, you knew?"

"No. Spooky told me you were jet lagged." Scully feels a rush of affection for Mulder. Armstrong must have found out via the Bureau. "I'm sorry," he finishes sincerely.

Scully nods. "Thanks." She never knows what to say.

* * *

Scully walks back into the room confidently, banishing her headache to some far corner of her mind. Mulder looks over at her as she walks in, then turns back to his white board, crossing off yet another name on his list.

"What are you working on?" Scully asks.

He doesn't look up. "Weeding out the ones who've died, who are in custody. When the results come back from the hospitals, could you look over them for me? Anything matching the profile."

"Where will you be?"

He caps the blue marker. "I'll be following the missing persons leads. With Gordon."

"Can I help with what you're doing now?"

"No, we're leaving soon. I'm just grasping at straws here." Mulder looks at her, chews on his lip for a moment. "I'll call you."


	6. Chapter 6

Mulder reaches across the dashboard in front of Gordon, popping the glove compartment open, shuffling the papers inside.

"Damn."

"What?"

"Check under the seat. She keeps hiding them in new places."

Gordon bends down, feels beneath the passenger seat. "These?" He holds up a bag of sunflower seeds, a few shells fall out. Mulder puts them in the cup holder. He pulls onto the interstate, headed toward their third missing person interview of the day. Outside, the sky has turned a dingy afternoon yellow.

"She doesn't look sick. I had no idea." Mulder had hoped Gordon wouldn't bring it up.

"Believe me, she wants it that way," he says, popping a seed.

They drive in silence, now. Mulder snacks and taps his thumbs on the steering wheel periodically. He thinks of Scully's face against his friend's chest, the way she had looked up at him. He remembers the feel of her paper thin, sickly cheek over his heart, how she had felt like a bird in his arms. A sparrow with a fluttering heartbeat and a tumor growing steadily between its eyes. He remembers how she had walked away from him.

"You didn't tell me what she looked like," Gordon muses, opening a file on his lap and chancing a look at Mulder, who is directing all of his focus to the road in front of them.

"No, I didn't. Why?"

"She's beautiful." He feels Mulder tense beside him.

"Look, why don't we talk about your partner, Pete." He cracks another seed, then sighs. "God, I'm sorry." Gordon coughs and suddenly becomes very interested in the papers on his lap.

"I don't think this is our victim, Mulder. She has brown eyes. Thirty-two."

Mulder nods, swallows the awkward moment away. "We should still stop by, even if it's only ten minutes." He flicks on the turn signal.

* * *

There is a crackle of thunder far away, as if earth and trees are being torn and moved. Scully's head snaps up from her meticulous notes and her eyes seek a window. There it is, the storm, although there are no trees, no dramatic show. Not even any rain, although she knows she had heard thunder. It is an evening storm, and will build in a slowly mounting way, until it reaches its crescendo and water finally plays its part. The beginning of the storm is as good a signal as any to wrap up her note-taking here, Scully decides, slipping the different colored paper, the photographs, back into the brown folder carefully.

"Where are you going?" It is the voice of Detective Armstrong, his tone a cruel tease.  _You're sick. You shouldn't be working. You should be with family. You're too weak to be on the job._

Scully stands and holds the file in her left hand. "To call my partner, sir."

"He doesn't need any help, he's with Gordon. Didn't he leave you anything to do?"

Scully bites the inside of her cheek. Hard. "We're partners, Detective Armstrong. We don't usually plan to work apart." He looks as if he's about to counter her, so Scully does her best to smile. "So, excuse me. I have to make a phone call."

She digs into her back pocket and pulls out her cell phone, walking to the door of the field office and stepping outside. Outside where the wind is whipping up dust and the sky is unfurling brown and black with unease. He answers on the second ring.

"Scully?"

"Mulder." A unique reversal. "Where are you?"

A pause. "Green County. Where are you?"

"At the field office, where you left me." The tone of the word 'left' does not escape him. "I can meet you and Gordon, if you want. Unless there's something you need me to do."

She hears Mulder say something to Gordon with the mouthpiece muffled into his collar. Sometimes, she wishes she could tuck her face there. "You know, Scully, it wouldn't hurt to check in on that print you came up with. Check again for matches, maybe even go over the stored bodies once more to see if you can get a duplicate."

Scully nods. So, he didn't want her there with him. "Okay. Yeah."

"Scully? What's wrong?"

She shakes her head, then remembers he can't see her. "Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. I'll see you at the motel later." The keys jangle in the pocket of her jacket, and Scully pulls them out with a hand that trembles. This troubles her, but she pushes it to some far corner of her mind to ponder later, or to forget.

* * *

When Dana Scully was sixteen, she was quietly taut and furious within the family. Looking back, she could see her argumentativeness was only a phase. There is often a point in a person's life where there is bodily anarchy: young boys whose hormones are going mad, young girls bouncing like a birdie in the family politics between a father and mother. Girls and their dad, girls and their mom. It was a minefield in one's teens, and it was only was only when she made the decision to join the F.B.I that she calmed and sailed, or essentially swam on a stormy sea, through the next four years.

In med school, in the forensic labs, she made it a point to distinguish female and male traits as clearly as possible. She witnessed how women were much more easily discombobulated by the personal slights of a lover or husband; but they were better at dealing with calamity in professional work than men. They were geared to giving birth, protecting children, steering them through crisis. Men needed to pause and dress themselves in coldness in order to deal with a ravaged body. In all her training, Scully saw that again and again. Women doctors were more confident in chaos and accident, calmer in dealing with the fresh corpse of an old woman, a young beautiful man, small children. The times Scully would slip into woe were when she saw a dead child in clothes. A dead three-year-old with the clothes her parents had dressed her in.

There were no women in this field office. Maybe a secretary or two, but no one in uniform. Scully had noticed this almost immediately, and had been aware of it when Armstrong had asked if she had a family. He had not asked Mulder this, and Scully had seen her partner pick up on this in the way he had looked at her after Armstrong had said it. Suddenly, she is angry, and pulls into the morgue with a cloud of dust. Above her, the sky grumbles.

* * *

Most of her sudden and inexplicable anger has disappeared once her work in the morgue is finished, the methodical process of searching through science for an answer has calmed her, and Scully leaves with the same information she came in with. Shutting the door to the rental, she knows that Mulder is going easy on her. He has done this on purpose, she realizes with a lurch. Brought her onto a tough case with a built in partner, one he knew before her. Scully feels a stab of jealousy, but feels foolish and starts the car.

The sky chooses that moment to open up overhead, a hard, heavy rain that beats down on the roof of the car and floods down the windshield. It drowns out the sound of the thoughts in her head, and Scully pulls out of her parking spot carefully, taking a left back to the motel, quietly hoping that Mulder will already be there.


	7. Chapter 7

He isn't at the hotel.

"He said to take you to dinner," Gordon says, waiting by her room for her to return. Scully has it on her lips to say no, that she isn't hungry, that she's tired, that she'd rather order in. This is a clever tactic, and she gives Mulder credit for it. Peter Gordon, a man she already likes. She will eat with him, eager to keep up appearances. With Mulder she would order in and pick at Chinese, or use any of her excuses she's been flirting with lately, because he'd never make her do anything she didn't want to.

"Where?" she asks, hoping he doesn't think she'll want to change. If she were to change clothes now she would fall right into bed and not wake up till morning.

"There's an Indian place about five miles away."

Scully nods, relieved, and hopes he hears no desperation in her voice when she asks, "Where is he?"

"At the station. He's determined there's more to it than we're seeing."

She laughs softly.

* * *

 

Their dinner, like the lunch he took her to, is surprisingly pleasant. They hardly bring up the case, which Scully appreciates. She learns that Gordon graduated from Yale, worked with the B.S.U straight out of Quantico, just like Mulder. He is quietly brilliant. Scully thinks she wouldn't have pegged him as an F.B.I agent had she not known he was one.

"What, then?" he asks, amused.

"A veterinarian."

"You're kidding!"

They talk about work. Gordon wants to know about the X-Files. Scully tells him there isn't much to tell.

"When we worked together, Mulder used to try and get me to catch onto his theories. 'The truth is out there', he used to say," Gordon smiles fondly at the memory.

"He still says that."

Gordon laughs, then sobers. He takes a sip of water with lemon, sets his knife and fork down on a diagonal across his red plate. "I think people have caused trouble over the existence of extraterrestrial life since…forever, really. Even when there was nothing to believe in with certainty. They still didn't know what truth was. We have never had the truth." He pauses, looks up from his glass of water to her face, pale in the light. "Not even with your autopsies, your science."  _My cancer, my abduction, my religion,_  Scully thinks.

"We use it to search for the truth. ' _The truth will set you free_.' I believe that."

Gordon smiles, and Scully senses that his heart is not behind it. "Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion."

* * *

 

Exhausted, Scully falls into bed without brushing her teeth or washing her face. Her shoes lay as if she had shook them off mid-step. After a moment, Scully shrugs out of her jacket, wriggles out of her pants, and attempts to fully undress while still fully laying on the bed. After a moment, feeling annoyance rising in her head and wanting to fend it off so it did not invade the delicate place between her eyes, Scully stops struggling. At least here she had medicine for that. She falls asleep half-dressed, half under the sheets, her mind troubled.

Scully dreams.

_Amygdala._

The name sounds foreign when Scully hears it. Interning at John's Hopkins in Maryland, having cut tissue away to reveal a small knot of fibers made up of nerve cells. Near the stem of the brain. The doctor standing beside her gives her the word for it.  _Amygdala._

"What does it mean?"

"Nothing. It's a location. It's the dark aspect of the brain."

"I don't-"

"A place to house fearful memories."

"Just fear?" Her voice is trembling, and she closes that inside her. That way of the body revealing fear, unease.

"We're not too certain of that. Anger too, we think, but it specializes in fear. It is pure emotion. We can't clarify it further."

"Why not?" Scully is reminded of what Gordon said hours ago.  _Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion._

"Well-is it an inherited thing? Are we speaking of ancestral fear? Fears from childhood? Fear of what might happen in old age? It could just be projecting fantasies of fear in the body."

"Dreams."

"Dreams," he agrees. "Though sometimes dreams are not the result of fantasy but old habits we don't know we have."

"So, it's something created and made by us, by our own histories, is that right? A knot in this person is different from the knot of another, even if they are from the same family. Because we each have a different past."

He pauses before speaking again, and Scully realizes that she does not know him. She has never before seen him in her life. He is surprised but not thrown by her degree of interest. "I don't think we know yet how similar the knots are, or if there are essential patterns. I've always liked those nineteenth century novels where brothers and sisters in different cities could feel the same pains, the same fears…But, I digress. We don't know, Dana." Dana.

"It sounds like another language, but not Latin," Scully presses.

"Well, check its derivation. It doesn't sound scientific."

"No. It sounds like some bad God."

The man, he's not a doctor now, he's taller than her, a look of pity crosses his face. "Oh, Dana…" he whispers. She raises her eyebrows.

"You have so many fears, Dana," he says. Who is he? "What are you so afraid of, Dana?" Dana. It sounds foreign to her ears.

Death, she thinks. Dying. Failing. Crying. Leaving. Loving.

"God can help you. God can help you." Scully's eyes flash up to the man who is towering over her. She is certain she's never seen him before. Dreams aren't supposed to be this vivid. Maybe this isn't a dream. She wants to wake up. Instead, she asks,

"Who are you?"

"If you spoke to me more, you would know."

Scully shakes her head, tears pricking at her eyes. "No!"

"You're dying, Dana. God can help you."

Scully wakes up with a rush, drenched in sweat, her face sticky with tears. Four in the morning. She gets out of bed, tripping over her trousers and tumbling toward the washroom. In the mirror she looks gaunt and scared. She wipes smeared makeup from her eyes and turns on the shower. She will not fall back asleep after a dream like that. It was a dream, a dream, a dream, a dream, she chants as she showers. A dream.

* * *

 

In the morning, early, Mulder and Scully look for each other, each too shy to make the first move. Finally, Scully knocks on Mulder's door. It opens almost immediately, giving him away. They both attempt to school their expressions. His of relief that she's still well and whole. Hers of peace; he's evidently gotten some sleep, from the way his hair is sticking up at odd angles.

"Good morning," they say at the same time, but do not laugh.

"You weren't awake when I got back," Mulder explains.

"I was tired. What time did you get back?"

"Around eight." Jesus, she'd been asleep before eight?

Scully shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Do you want to get breakfast? Do we have time?" Mulder brightens considerably, and looks as if he'd like to give her a quick hug. She wishes he would. No one has in quite some time, and the need for physical soothing during illness does not vanish with childhood.

"Yeah, let's get breakfast, Scully."

* * *

 

"Scully?" Mulder asks, reaching for the sugar to pour in his coffee.

"Mmh?" Scully looks up from the newspaper.

"Does God love everyone?" His tone assures her that he is not joking, and Scully is thrown. Both by his question and the tone accompanying it. She considers it for a moment, then nods.

"Of course."

Like a child, he prods her. "Murderers?"

"Yes."

And, like Mulder, he jokes, "Coffee?"

Scully tips her head, allowing it. "Coffee isn't a living thing."

"But if it were, God would love it?"

"Yes." Scully looks back at her paper, then back at her partner. "What is this all about, Mulder?"

He shrugs and stabs a piece of sausage with his fork. "Just curious." She looks at him for a moment longer, then turns the page to the crossword puzzle.

Minutes later, Mulder's phone rings. A missing girl, returned. Scully throws a twenty dollar bill on the table as they walk out.

* * *

 

Caroline Fellows is a tall, thin girl with a laceration above her left eye. Scully thinks she can't be more that twenty, maybe twenty-one. No parents, no siblings.

"Caroline, do you have any sort of degenerative eye condition? Macular? Retinal?" Caroline turns to Scully, next to her.

"How did you know?" she lightly touches the small wound above her eyebrow. "I have dry AMD."

Scully nods while Mulder is kept in the dark at the other side of the table. "I don't suppose there's any chance of you knowing what he looked like…"

Caroline nods. "He was wearing a plaid shirt," Mulder takes out a pen and begins scribbling. Caroline closes her eyes for a moment. "Yeah, a plaid shirt and…he had brown hair. I couldn't tell you what color eyes, I'm sorry."

Scully smiles sadly. "You've helped us more than you know, Caroline. Do you know where he took you?"

Caroline nods emphatically. "Yes. He took me to his house, I think. A blue house. I don't know what street, but it was in the wealthy area. Near L.A. I ran all the way to a parking lot with a phone booth. It was dark, I don't think I could tell you how to get there again."

Mulder taps his pen on the table and stands, leaving the room. Scully watches him go, the way he doesn't look back at her even to say goodbye, and she frowns.

Caroline Fellows is brave. "Are you two together?"

Scully looks at her. "We're partners, yes."

"That's not what I meant."

* * *

 

Mulder is driving alone, against protocol.  _Never go out on an assignment alone._ He went anyway. He had felt Scully's eyes on him as he had left, the betrayal there. He is driving toward the affluent side of town, but will not look for the suspect's home. He has not come here for that.

There is so much that Scully doesn't know about him. For example, it is not known to her that his favorite flower is the poppy. That as a child he had often dreamt about earthquakes. That his favorite form of punctuation is the question mark. That he sometimes imagines his own death. That he thinks it is wrong to love the woman that he does.

Mulder is here to leave her. To go away, if even for a moment. It is as if he is training himself to live without her. He thinks it would be too strange to live in a world without her in it. And, as if he had scheduled it, his phone rings.

"Mulder."

"Mulder, it's Scully," Gordon says.

"What happened? What's wrong with her?"

A pause from the other end. "She was in a fender bender, passed out at the wheel. She's fine, now."

"Where?"

"We're at UCLA. She's in the ER."

Mulder nods, flicks the turn signal on. He's on the other side of town. Idiot.

* * *

 

"There you are," he says, gently. The lights are off, and she's both cold and hot at the same time. Scully blinks, disoriented.

"Where am I?" she swallows dryly. "What happened?"

Gordon sits on the edge of her bed and sighs. "You got in a bit of a car accident on your way back to your motel."

Concussion, then. "I don't remember-"

"You were having one hell of a nosebleed."

Scully looks to her left, sees the bag of blood they've hung next to her. Cancer, then. "That bad, huh?" Gordon nods. Scully props herself up on her elbows, then promptly sinks back into the bed. The movement had caused a stabbing pain between her eyes, the blood loss had taken most of her strength. "Where's Mulder?"

Gordon squeezes her hand lightly. "I called him. He's on his way."

"Was anyone injured? In the crash?"

He shakes his head. "Just a fender bender a couple miles after you pulled out of the parking lot. Barely a scratch. It was more the blood loss that scared everyone."

Scully rolls her eyes. "Who else knows?"

"Me, Powell, Detective Armstrong-" Scully groans.

"It's fine, don't worry about it."

Scully shifts her feet and the sheets whisper with the movement. She looks up at Gordon again.

"Anything I can get you?"

She nods. "Maybe some water."

He nods and squeezes her hand again. "Anything for the lady." Scully smiles.


	8. Chapter 8

He hates hospitals. The smell of them, the beep beep beep, the green and blue and white. He's become too familiar with them in the past year, so familiar that he finds the ER without much help at all. They're all so similar.

"Dana Scully?" he asks the first person he sees wearing scrubs, then sees her. She's propped up in a bed with someone sitting on the edge of it. Someone who's holding her hand and making her duck her head to hide a smile. The nurse in front of him points, and Mulder watches. The man stands and leaves her bedside, pulling the curtain closed behind him.

"How is she?" Mulder asks Gordon. His friend smiles.

"She's fine. She's asking for you."

Scully had lowered her bed and was curled like a question mark when Mulder slips by the blue curtain and finds himself standing over her. She looks up, eyes wide and wet. "Mulder."

"Don't wear it out."

Scully grants him a smile then, and his heart soars. How rare, those smiles, how precious. "Where did you go?"

He sits in the plastic chair next to her bed. "Nowhere. Near where Caroline Fellows said he might live." Scully's expression of horror isn't what he'd expected. Chastisement, maybe. But not this.

"Mulder, you didn't!" she whispers harshly.

"I know-"

"You're never supposed to go out like that alone."

He nods. "I know. But I'm here, to talk about you." Scully looks instantly uncomfortable.

"Take me out of here," she says, fiddling with her IV.

He looks from her to the bag of blood, then back to her. "No."

"Yes. I'm fine. I'll sign the AMA and you can drive me back and hover as much as you want."

Mulder stands and moves to her bed, sitting on the side of it as Gordon had done and watching as her shoulder moved slightly with each breath. The shock of red hair splayed across the pillow is suddenly amusing, a stark contrast to the linens and her moon face. He can't fathom, for the hundred thousandth time, why he does everything she says. Against everything in him, he's about to drive her out of this hospital. She's death walking, and he'll continue to do anything for her until-

No. That won't happen. She's not going to die. She can't.

"Okay, Scully."

* * *

"Should we contact your brother?"

Scully looks at Mulder as if he's gone mad. "Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe you'd want to stay with him the next few days," Mulder tries, watching as she carefully lowers herself into the car.

"I'll see how I feel in the morning. Maybe we can catch this guy and be on our way home by tomorrow afternoon."

On the drive back to the motel Scully is quiet, and it's only when Mulder opens his mouth to ask her if she's at all hungry that he realizes she's asleep. He's always marveled at how she could sleep like that, sitting up straight, hands folded neatly in her lap, with only the loll of her head betraying her.

When they arrive at the motel after a thirty minute drive, Mulder wonders for a moment how to do this. Finally, tapping her hand, squeezing her shoulder lightly, he tries to wake her up. She's always been a light sleeper, so the fact that she doesn't immediately wake frightens him. The pain medication must have addled her senses, though, because she wakes up after a minute and looks at him, confused.

"We're at the motel."

She nods. "Okay."

Standing up too quickly on the other side of the car moments later, she stumbles and wobbles on her heels, putting a clammy hand on the roof to steady herself. Mulder waits for her to collect herself, then shakes his head, giving up pretenses. He goes to her and gives her one of his hands, which she takes. As they walk to her room, Mulder thinks of how they don't say as much as they should to each other. He loves her, but is too scared to tell her. He knows there is more to the cancer than Scully is telling him. Neither is wearing a costume, but they are both disguised by the things they do not say aloud.

Holding hands, Mulder thinks, is a way to say nothing together.

* * *

It is raining again. Scully has changed into pajamas, her movements careful and slow. Mulder had knocked before coming into her room, and Scully had opened the door without a word, going back to bed. They remember another conversation in the rain.

"Gordon is sad about something," Scully muses, laying down but not closing her eyes.

Mulder says nothing, but she is right. "Tell me," she says quietly. Feeling awkward, Mulder sits on the bed across from her and takes off his shoes. Hover he will.

He doesn't know if it's his tale to tell, but Mulder inhales before beginning. "Gordon's partner died about…two years ago."

Scully immediately looks sad. "I wondered why…"

"Bullet wound straight through the chest," he tells her. "Some kid robbing a liquor store. She died before she got to the hospital."

Scully's eyes widen. Then, almost as if to herself, "I can't imagine." A pensive pause.

"How do you feel now?"

She turns her head to him. "Fine. I think sleep will do the trick."

He nods. "I'll leave." Scully shakes her hand.

"No, stay," she says softly. "Tell me a story, tell me something."

"What do you mean? Tell you what?"

"Anything."

"A bedtime story, Scully?"

She closes her eyes. "Fine. I'll tell you one." There is a silence, as if Scully is waiting for some cue, some musical note in order to begin. Mulder lays down in the bed, crossing one leg over the other, and listens as her voice comes clear yet husky from beside him in the half-light.

"Sometimes, I think about my life." Oh, God, he doesn't want to hear this. "There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead."

"Scully, stop-"

She ignores him. "When I was in college, a man fell in love with the sound of my voice." Mulder thinks, No shit. "He heard it on a tape we'd done for some language class, and came to my dorm room and told me he loved me." Mulder imagines twenty-year old Scully's reaction and smiles behind closed eyes. "I laughed. I didn't believe in love, then. Or, I didn't know what it was." Scully inhales and exhales on the other bed, the noise of it wet. There is a profound silence, almost holy. "And when I think about my life, Mulder, I think about how I could have lived it. I could have loved. Been loved."

I love you. Mulder knows now, after knowing her, that love is less like the sparkling reflection of two souls on a morning river and more like trying to swim in a churning winter ocean. He loves her in a doomed way, a drowning man. I love your 380 Coral Blush lipstick and the stamp of it on water glasses in nameless diners. I love you like the sea waves love the shore. You are the gravitational pull of the far off moon and I am lost without you. He says none of this.

Instead, he sits at the side of the bed, and Scully sits up, watching him. He pulls his shoes back on, suddenly exhausted, and stands, all almost noiselessly. Not knowing what to do or say -they've never done this before- he stretches, then moves to leave.

"What are you doing?" he asks, the breath knocked out of him as Scully rises and throws herself into his arms, pulling him close. He doesn't see her clearly in the darkness, feels her cheek pressed to his sternum, her fingers spreading over his shoulder blades. He has wanted this, and everything about it is now wrong.

"Thank you," she whispers against him. There it is, the voice he fell in love with, thanking him for everything that's gone wrong in her life.

"No, Scully," he says, trying to push her away. "Don't thank me."

She shakes her head and kisses his chest. "Don't tell me what to do. Thank you." He doesn't know what she means.

She is thanking him for being the one person who has never left her side. Who has fought alongside her in every battle. The one who listens and loves her. Scully kisses his heart and whispers, "Mine."

Mulder looks down and Scully looks up. They light each other up. They are ridiculously mismatched. He touches the rise and fall of her chest, feeling her heartbeat.

"Mine."

They needed death for a kiss, Mulder thinks as he misses her lips in the dark. She laughs quietly, and Scully's laughter is a question he wants to spend his whole life answering. He worries she is doing this in the grief of her illness, but doesn't care. Because she tips her head up and kisses him. In this moment they are the only two people on Earth.

He never could have kissed her forcefully, not like this. She is too precious for him to bruise, even with lips on collar bones, even lover's marks. Scully is melting against him, and there are no dreams, no nightmares. Mulder touches her shoulder, and she looks up at him, sleepy-eyed. It seems that they will both go to bed and make love, almost. It seems that they will move to the bed and undress and bare themselves, show each other their battle scars and kiss them tenderly. They will cry afterwards, maybe, battered souls that they are. They will see each other in their simplest form and treat each other with reverence.

Scully cups Mulder's cheek and kisses him again. Yes. Let's go away. Let's you and me run, or die. I want a fated love. I want you, just as you are.

"Shh," she says. Her voice is warm. "Don't say anything.

But they do not go to the bed and strip themselves of their armor. Two kisses here in this room. More chaste than passionate, loving and gentle, comforting. Mulder will go back to his room and Scully will fall back into bed and curl into her ever faithful punctuation mark. She will wake up like this, not having moved. Their sleep will be dreamless. Thank God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: End of the unfinished fic! Oddly, it sort of works as an ending, but obviously the casefile remains unsolved, therefor the work isn't finished. To be honest, I've realized through the years that I'm good at character-driven writing, but sort of lousy at plot-driven fiction. Maybe I should stick to one shots and give myself a break. The opening lines to this chapter were borrowed from this piece of writing and put into another one of my fics, so it exists somewhere on the internet already. I hope you enjoyed what I came up with. Thanks, as always, for reading.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I found two more chapters in a different document! Wahoo! Look for another update! And let me know whatcha think.

In the morning, Mulder unlocks her door -he must have taken her key- and brings her breakfast (pineapple, buttered toast, eggs). She's curled up, still pale and small and childlike in the half-light of a six AM morning. She doesn't need his voice to know he's there.

"Mulder."

"I brought you something to eat," he says softly, sitting beside her and placing the bag gently on the bedside table. Scully sits up too quickly and inhales sharply. Her head hurts like hell and then she remembers —the car accident. That's why he's being so careful.

"Thanks," she says, even though she can't fathom the idea of eating. She opens the bag. "This looks really good, but I'm just not that hungry right now."

Mulder shakes his head. "Not this time, Scully. I'm going to watch you eat some breakfast. You look like shit."

She looks hurt. "Jesus, Mulder. Thanks a lot. Just what I needed to hear."

He stands up and walks to the TV, switching it on and flipping the channel to 'I Love Lucy', thinking it's something she might like. The sound of the TV audience laughing makes Scully's stomach roll, and the prospect of eating makes it go on a tumble dry cycle. He pulls up a chair to sit next to her and picks up the dossier, flipping through for the hundredth time, waiting.

After several minutes, Scully's stomach settles enough for her to wonder if maybe hunger itself is making her feel so ill. She thinks she could stomach the lightness of pineapple, and takes a brave bite. Another. Another. It settles nicely and she feels wonderful.

"Okay?"

She nods. "Yeah, okay."

"Now, you keep eating and stay in bed. Pete and I have a lead from the information Caroline gave us that we're going to run on. This time I won't go alone."

Scully raises her eyebrows. "Just give me a minute to get ready, you're not leaving without me."

He grabs her skinny arm. "For once in your life will you just admit you're not fine?!"

"What do you mean? Mulder, you're hurting me!" He lets her arm go instantly, then sits down on the bed, running a hand across his face wearily.

"I'm not going to have you pass out at the wheel again, Scully. Or, God forbid, while performing an autopsy."

Scully's eyes are ice or fire, he can't tell, but they're trained on him and she says, her voice level but millimeters away from cracking like a frozen pond or sparks from a bonfire, "I'm afraid."

A long moment where neither says a word, barely breathes. Then, in the still soft morning as Lucy says something to Ethel and the audience laughs loudly, Mulder leans closer to her. He slips his arm around her and strokes her back gently, as one would a stingray, and kisses her behind the ear. He doesn't tell her that he is also afraid. She knows this already. Mulder wants to keep her words alive in the room, swirling and settling on cheap bedspreads and furniture like dust one cleans up after a vacation.

She's afraid. He thinks that maybe now she might cry, and that he couldn't bear because then he would, too, and they'd fall into the immortal clinch of petrified anguish on this motel bed. He has to leave before he squeezes her too close and breaks her into a thousand chips of glass.

Scully doesn't hug him back, and the pressure inside her head explodes. She wants him to hug her harder, press her so close he can feel her heart racing and pounding like the fastest horse on the racetrack, right next to his. She wants to tell him she loves him, but she can't, because she's afraid of that, too.

* * *

They're driving to the affluent side of L.A. Houses large as schools using enough power to light up a supermarket. Mulder thought how strange it would be to live in one of these, especially as a single man or a couple with no children. All that space with no one to pass through it. Rooms could go weeks with no visitors, simply because there weren't enough of them. Gordon drove, and they both look for blue.

"There." At the end of Washington street, a tall baby blue house sits on a slight downward slope. A million-dollar car is parked in the driveway to the right, and the lawn is perfectly manicured.

Mulder feels the same rush he does whenever a criminal is on the other side of the door, although this could be a false lead. He and Gordon exit the car and walk to the large front door, Mulder feeling like Alice in Wonderland against its height and width. They ring, hearing a loud chime ring inside the house.

Within moments, the door is opened and they are greeted by a baby-faced young woman wearing a black dress and white apron.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

They show her their badges. "We're from the F.B.I, ma'am," Gordon explains. "Could we come in for a moment?"

The maid raises her eyebrows, but opens the door wider to let them inside, showing them to a large sitting room that looks as if it hasn't been touched in years. Preserved in pristine condition like a dried flower. "Would you like to speak to Mr. Gleberman? He isn't here."

"Where is he?" Mulder asked casually.

"Sasha? Who's there?" a voice from the stairwell asks. Mulder sees a delicate woman descending, her white-blonde hair pinned on top of her head. She seems to glow, almost ghostlike in demeanor as she practically floats down the stairs.

The maid walks to Mrs. Gleberman. "Two men from the F.B.I, Mrs. Gleberman." Sasha helps the older woman to a chair.

"Oh, how exciting!" Mrs. Gleberman exclaims, looking roughly at Mulder's hairline. "I rarely get visitors anymore. What can I help you gentlemen with?"

Gordon clears his throat. "We'd like to speak with your husband, if that's at all possible, Mrs. Gleberman."

She nods. "He's out of town at the moment, I'm sorry. I could get him on the phone for you, I suppose."

"Does he travel often?" Gordon asks.

"Oh, yes. More than I'd like. But it's only ever for a few days. He needs to promote his artwork, you see." Mulder looks around the room, suddenly noticing a painting in the corner. A large, blue, tearing eye. So realistic that it seems to be weeping into his very soul. "Why does the F.B.I have questions for my husband?" Mrs. Gleberman asks suddenly.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Gleberman," Gordon placates. "It's just routine. When will your husband be back from…where did you say he was going?"

"He went to Glenfield, Colorado. He'll be back on Sunday." Mulder hears the tone of her voice shift from warm to suspicious, and senses that they aren't welcome anymore. He stands, extending his hand.

"Well, thank you, Mrs. Gleberman. We'll be in touch." She doesn't shake his hand in return, and Mulder realizes all at once that the woman had been expertly concealing the fact that she's blind.

* * *

Gordon twists the keys until the car hums to life and pulls back onto the road triumphantly. "Well, that's our guy for sure. Can't believe we pegged him on the first try. Jesus."

Mulder picks at a sunflower seed. "Let's not jump to conclusions. I'm pretty sure he's our guy, too, but there's no evidence against him yet. The guy likes eyes, his wife is blind, he lives in the blue house, but what does that prove? We need to catch him red handed. We need to find him with some blood on his hands." He pulls his phone out of his pocket and presses 1.

"Who're you calling?"

"Scully. We should pick her up before we go to dinner."

Gordon nods, then makes a left back in the direction of their motel.

* * *

"Why don't you wait here, I'll go get her," Mulder says, and Gordon gets back in the car. Mulder walks up to her room and knocks twice.

"Mulder?"

He opens the door quietly and slips inside. She's dressed and sitting on the edge of her bed, giving her shoes by the door a baleful glance. "Can you bring those over here?"

Scully slips her shoes on while Mulder looks around the room. She had actually stayed in bed all day, finding herself too tired or lightheaded to do anything more than walk to the bathroom or pour herself water. Mulder asking her to dinner was his olive branch, but it had filled her stomach with butterflies. She was flattered and touched that he would take her out with his friend after their recent fights.

But getting dressed and leaning against the counter to do her makeup, trying to make herself look alive, had taken a lot of the stamina she'd gained during the day. So much so that the simple idea of crossing the room for her shoes seemed like a daunting journey.

"Are you hungry?" Mulder asks, happy to see her red lips again. She isn't really, but Scully nods all the same. She just doesn't know how she'll get there. "You look nice." She looks like work, but again he's making up for earlier, so she smiles.

"Thank you. So, where are we going?"

"Gordon says it's your choice. What are you in the mood for. Chinese? Mexican? Italian? Seafood? He says there's a good place about ten minutes away with salmon that'll blow your mind."

"Let's go there then. I don't mind." She'll get a salad anyway, or pick at the bread basket. Mulder looks pleased, and moves to leave. "Mulder?"

He turns around and looks at her, still sitting at the edge of the bed. "I need your help. I don't want Pete to see."

Which is how they walk to the car with his hand holding onto her hip, a grip so tight it hurts, holding her up while she takes careful steps. This way nobody knows. He's a man with his arm around a woman, and nothing more. Nobody needs to know she can't hold herself up without swaying.

* * *

Surprisingly, Scully finds herself stealing bites off of Mulder's salmon along with her salad. "What about Mrs. Gleberman?" Scully asks after they've told her about the new developments.

"What do you mean?" Gordon asks.

"I mean, you didn't ask her about herself or him? You say it's got something to do with blue eyes. Didn't she have blue eyes and blonde hair? When did she become blind? How long have they been married? What does she do for a living?" Gordon and Mulder suddenly become very interested in their dinner, and Scully flags down the waiter and asks for a glass of wine. She knows she shouldn't, not with her meds, but her head is roaring and she wants to dull the pain.

"Maybe we should go back tomorrow…"

Mulder shakes his head. "No, let's go back to the evidence. We'll wait to interview Gleberman on Sunday. We've got the F.B.I database to run his information through. Hers, too. If they're both clean, which is what I'm anticipating, that's another thing in their favor."

Scully yawns, and Mulder looks at her. "But tonight I think everyone needs a break. The boys at the office are still working on finding potential victims and I've told them to notify us if something comes up. We all need to get some sleep and get ready to put this son of a bitch in prison." She's never heard him talk like this. So reasonably.

By the time they make it back to the motel and Gordon drives away, she's exhausted, audibly moaning with relief as she kicks her shoes off and flops onto the bed. "That was a good dinner, Mulder. Thank's for..."

He shrugs. "No problem. You too tired to watch TV in half an hour?" Code for: I'm going to check on you in half an hour, and you better be in your pajamas, half asleep.

"Sure."

When he comes in again and finds an episode of M*A*S*H, she's not in the bedroom. He hears soft, small female noises coming from the bathroom. Clicks of various lotions and then what must be her brushing her teeth. Finally, she unlocks the door and comes out, shuffling unsteadily back to the bed. Not surprised to find him there already reclined on the other bed. She picks up two pillows and goes over to him, setting herself up beside him and feeling him tense as she slips her legs under the duvet.

Mulder is still wearing his shoes, his legs crossed and arms crossed and resting on his stomach. She smells like rose oil and he doesn't know how because it's not something she sprayed on or used purposely. She just smells like Scully with damp hair tucked behind her ears and he can't look at her without his eyes inevitably dropping to the feather soft skin of her chest, shadowed but brilliant in the lamplight, showing from the neck of her pajamas.

"I like this show," Scully says. It's familiar and terrifying to be in bed with Scully.

She draws her knees to her chest and looks at Mulder. "We can watch something else, though, if you don't." He doesn't move, doesn't look at her, and Scully taps his arm. "Mulder?"

He painfully looks at her. He knows if she scoots any closer to him or says another word that he'll want to clutch her to his chest again. He's trying to hold back.

"No, it's fine. I like this show. Leave it."

Scully sits back and stretches her legs out again, and he's reminded of how little she really is. Next to him, she sighs deeply and rearranges her pillows so she can lean back. "If I fall asleep, wake me up, okay?"

She's out like a light the next time he glances over and he lets her sleep.


End file.
